


Four Leaves to a Clover- The King, the Princess, the Knight and the Dragon

by Humanities_Handbag



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Adoption, Anger, Angst, Clover - Freeform, F/M, Home, Innability to have children, King - Freeform, Knight, Lashing Out, Loss, Nursery destruction, Princess - Freeform, Sad times, Strange Magic, Stubbs - Freeform, dragon - Freeform, empty beds, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Humanities_Handbag/pseuds/Humanities_Handbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“According to tradition, such leaves bring good luck to their finders, especially if found accidentally. In addition, each leaf is believed to represent something: the first is for faith, the second is for hope, the third is for love, and the fourth is for luck.”</p><p>In which grief is merely a way to leave your tears in a trail: One must learn to follow them eventually.</p><p>Bog and Marianne wish to have children.</p><p>There are complications.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Leaves to a Clover- The King, the Princess, the Knight and the Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Marianne and Bog wish to have children. But wishes are cruel in that they are kept from the most deserving of people. And no matter how many borders they've had to cross there will always be another line of thorns to meet them on the other side.

It would all begin, they supposed, when marriage became something neither could avoid any longer. 

It would have happened eventually. They all _knew_  that it had to. Everyone had expected it, and everyone in both Kingdoms nearly flew into a tizzy at the idea of the two star crossed lovers (who would have rather taken insult to the idea that anything between them was _remotely_ star crossed thank you very much) finally tying a knot that was already far gone in its entanglement. 

Some loved it.

Most hated it. And hisses, growls and pinched looks were all too common, the idea of a _Fairy_ and a _Goblin_  almost too different for anyone to stomach. Then again, they’d always been different. Even when the idea of going through with a ceremony had, in its own way, been nothing anyone had expected.

“I thought there’d be more fire,” Dawn told Sunny honestly, whispering from the side of her mouth while clapping for the wildly uncomfortable couple who’d been corralled atop a platform to wave regally at the large crowd. “Or, you know, at _least_  one kidnapping.”

“I was expecting a song,” he tipped back on his heels, smiling when Marianne shot him a thumbs up. “Something rock and roll.”

“Huh. Yeah. I guess it’s weird they didn’t do that either.”

“I don’t know if he could’ve done an encore to Mistreated-”

“He’s Boggy, Sunny, he’d find a way to do it.”

“Too true.” His fingers wound through hers and she gave them a light squeeze, beaming up at Bog who was looking a little more pallid than he should have been, hunching down at a new barrage of whistles and hoots, his smile shy and his eyes bright. Clawed hands found themselves filled with long Fae fingers and Dawn had to let out a long, dreamy sigh. 

“They’re just so _perfect together_ , aren’t they?”

“Mmhmm… Wait. How did he do it again?”

“Do-”

“Propose.”

She shrugged. “Nothing big, really. Which was a shock. He just sorta… asked. I kinda thought there’d be more. But, I mean, she seemed happy. And they’ve talked about it for a while, so who’m I to complain, right!?”

It was true. The odd couple had talked marriage more than anyone had truly thought necessary. People had told them to spring the engagement. To surprise and to dazzle. To make the other know why they were marrying them- for the shocks and the electricity that came along with it.

Bog and Marianne had enough of those shocks and electricities simply being together. And so when it came to something like _marriage_  they hadn’t seen a need to make a fuss. Months of discussions and reasonings had lead to the fateful night when Bog, sitting beside Marianne in his study, looked up and said, “Perhaps we should get married soon?”

Marianne tore her eyes away from her book - _a delightfully gory adventure by all accounts with a dragon who had a rather disgusting penchant for biting the heads off knights_ \- and raised one, high brow.“Are you proposing to me _right now_ , oh Bog King,” she’d joked. And though the moment was quiet and dull and domestic and altogether quite boring by most standards, his eyes had shone with a promise of adventure. 

“I suppose I am.”

“Oh.” And she nodded. “Okay.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“Mmhmm. Now be quiet. I’m at a good part. The dragon likes to eat hands now too.”

“Right. Sorry. Proceed.”

“Thanks.” 

And that had been that. The next day Griselda had been informed and, sometime after, Dawn. And the two of them had cheered and cooed more than the two engaged would ever find themselves stomaching. 

Everything had fallen into place and began a series of complete and utter _chaos_  when Griselda had opened her mouth, shimmering in her rapture of _finallies_  and announced, “now you two just need to get to makin’ me some grandbabies!”

Bog would forever remember that statement. 

Marianne would try her hardest not to.

The conversation of children had been _discussed_ , but never in length. Not when the whispers and the questions and the looks and the rumors did it all for them. And it wasn’t long before both were beginning to cripple under the weight of it all. So they did whatever they always did when they found themselves without a way out of their terrible and sinking labyrinth constructed by those around them.

They _jibed_. And, at first, it _had_ been something that they’d only teased one another about.

“One day, when you’re a mother,” he’d told her, rolling his eyes heavenward, “you’re going ta be as bad as mine. And then where will we be?”

“You take that back!” Her hand twitched towards her sword, though her eyes sparkled amber with nothing close to anger, and he fed off it without hesitation.

“You will! You’ll smother them all with plans of weddings and pester them about all their life choices-”

“Ha! As if! And besides,” she added, poking at his stomach and earning herself a well deserved tug to the ear, “your mother is _lovely_. So maybe I _do_ want to be like her when we have our kids.”

“Sure. Of course ye do.”

“What? Does that bother you, oh Bog King?”

“Aye! It does, quite!”

“Then what are you gonna do about it?”

The sound of metal on metal had rung true, sparks flying, illuminating the specters of shadows arching their way up the sides of the castle, peeking through cracks and shutters and pasts to take looks at the King and Princess who had defied a nation with something as banned as it was beautiful. Their teases sated old grudges and wants clinging at the bottom of dungeons and in the folds of sheets, and the kisses that would follow, hot and stinging, leaving crescent shaped moons all over the planes of her body, did their part to erase conversations and make all talk of family blur into a reminder to be picked up later.

But soon teasing had become looks. Watching children playing in the fields had sent Marianne’s fingers playing nervous chords up her arms and hearing his mother speak of grandchildren had suddenly not left a bad taste at the back of his mouth.

It was Bog who had suggested it first.

“I think…” he began hesitantly, “I mean- do you ever think about - _uh_ \- about… _children_?”

He wasn’t sure of what response he’d get, but the silence that followed wasn’t one of them. Slowly, nervously, he turned on his side, doing his best to watch through the darkness for a reaction. “Marianne-?”

“Yeah…”

“Do you ever think-”

“No. No, I heard you…”

Bog swallowed, claws fiddling with the sheets beneath them. The moss was fresh and cool, a replacement from escapades that had taken place a few nights prior. Late night paperwork had become nearly unbearable and she’d nipped at his jaw just right, teeth catching every craggy inch of it, and before anything else could much happen he’d pinned her to the bed and they’d had to do their best to explain to Griselda exactly why they needed new sheets.

Claws, it would seem, were fantastic for dragging up sides and toying along all the most sensitive ridges of a Fairies delicate body. But they did not work well with bedding. The silence dragged on and his claws once more found their way through the soft green.

“I think I’d like to be a father.” She looked up at him then, brown eyes hard and clear. “I know it’s something my mum pesters about. And the Kingdom wants it.”

“Is that why you-”

“No.” He shook his head, sharp nose slashing. “I think I’d want to be one. A Father, I mean.”

Her eyes slitted, hard and speculative, as if she couldn’t see through the layers of time and had to believe after so much had passed. The interrogation of one who’d done nothing but know negatives. “Are you sure?”

“Marianne-”

“This isn’t something you can turn back from, Bog. This isn’t… this isn’t like a spar or anything. You can’t just quit in the middle-”

“I never quit.”

“I know but what if-”

“No.” She stopped short when he grabbed her hands, holding them close to his chest, landing a quick kiss against the knuckles, lips rasping soft skin. “This is something I want. If ye don’t want it, that’s okay too. But this,” and he dropped another kiss to her palm, trailing down her wrist. Fangs pricked at skin and she let out a tiny, shivering gasp. “This is something tha’ I fought for. An’ now I want to fight again. For someone else. Someone who’s… perfect. An’ mine.”

“Are you-” she held back a moan when teeth scraped up to her shoulder, nibbling beneath her ear. One hand had begun a travel up her waist, kneading against her breasts and she had to keep herself from slumping against them, “a-are you saying tha - _ah_!- at I’m not… not yours… oh Bog King…” Another bite to her throat and she purred.

“Oh _Marianne_ …” he snarled against her collarbone, and the vibrations sent her into a tizzy. “ _Yee’ve nevair been myne, love, not fer a moment. Joost something ay’ll chase round the world f’rever._ ”

“You have me,” she growled, pressing closer, needing to feel every scrape of scale, every shift of plate. His cruel chuckle nearly sent her over the edge, and his tongue flicking out an apology against a fresh bite came close to finishing the job.

“ _No, love. Yee’re not mayne. Boot rest assured, I am very much yee’rs_.” The sound of another tunic ripping was the most wonderful in the world and she collapsed onto him as claws did their best to explore every inch and fangs helped taste every part and her own dulled Fairy fingers and teeth made him scream her name into an oblivion they’d grown accustomed to stubbornly filling until it overflowed.

* * *

“Can I have time to think about it?” She asks him the next morning before he’s even sat down for breakfast. She’d gotten up earlier than he did, and he’d almost been too transfixed with her, standing before the large alcove windows as the first painted clouds framed her body like the most soft of infernos. Her hair mussed, dark circles carrying weight beneath each eye, a cup of something steaming in her hand and her nightgown sliding off one shoulder. An image he found so completely _domestic_  that he nearly dragged her back to bed once more. But her voice was there again, calling his name.

“Huh?”

“I said can I have time to think about it?”

“Think about…”

“You know.” She shrugged, and the baggy sleeves trekked their way down further. “About us.”

“Oh.”

“ _Yeah_.” She made a move to sip from the mug, but instead let it sit on the dining table. “I think I’d like to be a mother,” she told him after a pause. “But… can I think about it?”

He’s holding her close before she has time to breathe. She smells the same way she does every morning- musky from him, dewy from the moss, and something so _her_. Lilacs, daisies, perhaps even the odd trail of light that follows her with obedience. “Take all the time you need, love,” he tells her honestly. “I’ll wait forever.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll stop waiting for that altogether and wait for something else instead.”

She hugged him back until her tea went cold. But she didn’t mind. When he did end up hoisting her up into his arms, her legs round his waist and her laughter pure and twinkling, head thrown back in rapture, she forgot about it altogether.

* * *

It had been a long week. Far longer than she had expected, and her flight to the Dark Forest had been a lagging, tortuous one. Meeting after meeting had dragged on, and her neck was stiff from sitting too long, her through sore from shouting far too loudly at the members of her father’s Council. They’d insisted time and time again various ways to separate two Kingdoms until her nerves were raw from explaining the same story in ears that refused to listen.

“We’ve finally reached a place of peace,” she ground out to the men in front of her, long since done wondering why she appeared to be the only woman at the table. “Bog King and I-”

“The Goblin, you mean.”

“He is a King, and is to be addressed accordingly. And if you’d like to take up his title with him then by all means I’ll drag him here for the next council meeting and you can discuss his species with him _personally_.” The Council member who had suggested it quickly snapped his mouth closed with a pop of emptying gums. “As I was saying, Bog King and I have reached a point where trade is possible, and an alliance is well in the making. We’ll soon have access to their medicinal plants and our own healers have agreed to set up surgeries nearer to the border for more dire situations. And if arms are needed then they’ve agreed-”

“Goblin’s don’t fight _with_ us,” another one of the elders snapped. “They fight _against_ us. Always have.”

“No. What’s been happening for centuries, councilman, is a complete silence. And now that’s over. If you’ve got a problem with it-”

“We have!” The eldest of them had spoken up, a rare event, and all eyes turned on the scrap of a Fairy long since past his prime, shriveled and tired and bearded, eyes pressed closed with wrinkles, teeth long since evicted. He smacked his lips, wetting them with a greying tongue. “We have a problem with it,” he croaked in a voice smothered with dust. “Especially since our Princess has seen it fit to make a union with the Goblin acceptable.”

Marianne held back a groan, instead finding solace in grinding her teeth until they nearly cracked. “My relationship was never the topic of this discussion.”

“No. But it is the topic of this one. You’re a Fairy, your highness, and with all due respect-”

“With all due respect, councilman, you can all just take your heads out of your _asses_ and wake up.” The silence that followed was breathtaking, and the anger in her eyes could have smothered them all with its flames. “These meetings always start off as _something_ that’s much needed but in the end it’s the same. You seem to have a fixation on my love life, an entirely _inappropriate_ discussion for a place such as this one. I think you all seem to forget that I am to be your Queen. And what I do for this Kingdom is what I think is _best for it_. And what I think is best for it,” she snapped reasonably, keeping eye contact with all pairs of solemn and doubtful irises, “is not a _war_ or a _separation_. It’s _peace_. And if you feel that that isn’t acceptable then I would suggest you leave this room now.” No one moved. She billowed out a sigh, nodding. “Good. Any other questions.”

“Just one…” Her teeth were back to grinding, but she faced the eldest just the same, tearing him down with a glower. “You are our queen, and therefore we expect a bloodline to be produced.”

“Councilman, I’m warning you-”

“I just simply cannot see how something as pretty as you can find it in their heart to-”

Her fist slamming against the marble sent the elders into a tizzy, wings flapping, mouths snapping closed, brows shooting up. One choked on his tea, his own fist jamming against his collarbone between coughs. Another had yet to stop screaming. It was the eldest who’s reaction had remained unchanged, and she held his eyes, reading every message he sent in the condescending looks cast under heavy brows. _How do you stand to touch that, was all she could hear, and her blood boiled. How can you even stand to hold it at night and let him touch you and think that that thing is worth the love of a beauty such as yourself. Or are you even all that beautiful to begin with. Perhaps that’s why._

Her jaw ached from pressure and she could feel her nails digging into her palm, drawing blood. “This council,” she hissed, “is adjourned.” And before any of them could say otherwise, she’d left, the sound of hacking and screaming trailing behind her. And as soon as fresh air had been in her lungs she’d lunged through the air and had been off, facing the burning sun towards the silhouette of trees that none of her people would enter, but she alone seemed to find a comfort in.

And now she was tired and upset and rubbed raw. The back of her eyes pricked with something that might have been tears and her heart was twisting in the most miserable of ways.

The sight of his castle was both a perfect and horrible sight. A sanctuary from every terrible thing in the world and a constant reminder of it. She could burrow away in its walls but there would always be the looping reminder of words that burned embers. _How do you stand to touch that._  

But for now she’d take the sanctuary, and doing her best to bury those cruel thoughts into the back of her mind she landed outside the entrance, making her way on aching limbs towards the Throne Room, giving the Goblin’s she passed a tired smile and a nod.

“Queen Marianne!” Thang’s tenor reached her before she could even muster the strength to face the one person she was looking for and she let a sigh leak out of bruised lungs.

“Hey there, buddy. Still not Queen. Coronations not for a while.”

“Queen Marianne!” He either didn’t hear her or didn’t care, and she was beginning to suspect it was the latter. “The King wants you to meet him!”

“No, he doesn’t.” Stuff’s own baritone followed along, the female going to stand beside her counterpart. “Sorry, majesty. He’s just been busy. Told us to tell you to wait for him wherever. He’ll meet you. Just gotta take care of official business.”

“Oh…” she did her best to not let them see her wings drooping. “Right… um… well then I’ll… I guess I’ll just go to bed then. Or something.”

“Might be best. Could take a while.”

“But I thought that he wanted to show her -ow!” Whatever Thang was whispering far too loudly was cut off with a slap to the back of the head and a stern shake of the head from Stuff. “Oh. Oh! Right. Of course. Sorry Queen Marianne. He’s just busy. But he’ll meet you later. Tomorrow. Maybe…”

She tilted her head, keeping back the sudden and terrible disappointment. “I mean… does he need any help? I can help, you know. If its royal duties he’s struggling with-”

“No!” The shout came from both of them and she winced back. “No, sorry,” Stuff shrugged, playing off the outburst as nothing much at all. “He’s busy. That’s all. He said he’d get you when he was done. Might be tomorrow morning though, so you might as well stay the night or whatever you do.”

“Stay the night. Right…” suddenly the weariness in her bones was all that more heavy, and the nod she gave them nearly sent her head rolling off sinking shoulders. “Okay… well tell Bog I’m… I dunno. I’ll see him tomorrow then.”

“Right! Will do!” Stuff gave an awkward salute, grabbing Thang by the wrist and tugging him behind her, whispering chastations in his ear. _I didn’t mean to!_ Marianne heard him shout before he was shushed again, another cry of forlorn apologies following. The Fairy managed a weak smile. Well, at least _someone_ in the castle wasn’t beginning to cripple underneath horrifying self doubt. Which, she supposed, was something.

But the walk to his room - _their_  room- was longer. And her steps dragged. She managed to change out of clothes and into a nightshirt stolen from her father some years ago, relishing in the absence of thick petals, flopping forward between soft, billowy sheets. 

And that night, finally lulled by the sound of the first cicadas making their rounds in Summer’s fast return, she could only dream of words that held her wrists above her head and asked her _how can you stand to touch_?

* * *

Someone was shaking her awake.

She burst up out of a her spot, panic tumbling out in droves, before familiar claws were at her face and neck.

“ _Goddammit, Bog_ … You _scared_ me!”

“Sorry.” His hands slid off her face, going to land in her lap as he sat warily on the bed, the moss bending under his weight. “I had ta wake ye.”

“What…” she yawned, her fury forgotten in her exhaustion, “what _time_  is it?”

“Um… past three, maybe.” 

She groaned, flopping back into the pillows before his hands were peeling her back up through the air despite every protest. “I swear I’ll let ye sleep! But ye _have_  ta see this.”

“Right now?”

“Right now!”

“I swear to god, Bog,” she snarled, giving in with a kick of her feet as she rid them of the warmth she’d been so happily burrowed in, “if this isn’t a freaking _dance number_  with top grade pyrotechnics I’m leaving you for a dragonfly.”

“Uh… no dance number… or fire…” 

“Do you wanna meet my new consort.” He gave her a look, withering and excited, and she gave in with fingers splayed above her head. “Fine! I’ll come with you. But I swear, this had better be _great_.”

“It will be!” He’d grabbed her wrists before she had time to think, dragging her down the hall. And when they’d reached a room - _his study, she remembered_ \- Marianne found herself blinded by hands much too large. The door opened, hinges creaking, and the two of them walked together. And when they stopped, Fairy blinded by a Goblins fingers, together side by side in the mysterious new space, he finally stepped away, one last breath slipping through teeth in what could have been a final attempt at life.

“Okay. Look.”

And she did.

It was a sight to be sure. The old study used to hold nothing but dusty scrolls, old forms from his fathers and grandfathers time and archives rarely looked at but kept all the same. Large windows formerly draped in moss and slots of wood were now empty, streaming in the moonlight. Tiny chandeliers flickering with something green and familiar trickled off the ceiling, illuminating the newest pieces of furniture decorating the room.

Marianne stepped forward, doing her best to remember how to breathe past the lump in her throat.

The crib and the rocking chair had both been made of the same dark wood, carved with patterns of dragonflies and butterflies winding their way over and around tiny swords and staffs. She traced one of the weapons with a weak laugh and heard him parrot it with enough nervousness to suffocate. “I… I thought it best to put our history into it…and look!” He hurried forward, dragging her along, claws ticking a nervous beat against her arm. “I made sure to put blankets in an’ everythin’! An’- an over here I found the best toys! See!” He waved at the box spilling over with all sorts of things, silk winged creatures and bits of darkened oak fashioned into tiny Goblin and Fairy soldiers, standing at attentions under the confines of the lid. A few teething things like dried willow bark hung over the side, and Marianne could only guess that he’d factored his own fangs into whatever curse a child received. “And my mother, she dug this one up fer me…” He pointed into the crib and she peeked over.

The doll was a funny looking one. Made of moss and held together by leather ties, white fabric stuck in triangles mean to resemble a mouth full of fangs, it was more of a fat, awkward caterpillar than the monstrous looking Goblin she assumed it to be. Reaching down she ran her fingers along the edge, and the tips of her nails immediately grasped onto the wear of enough love and dedication to press the beast thin and seep holes against green, fabric skin.

“Was this…” she swallowed, almost too nervous to pick it up. “Was this _yours_?”

“Aye.” When she looked over at him he ducked, shoulders rustling, nearly blocking out a bashful smile. “His name is Grumby. An’ he’s a good chap, really. Thought it’d be best to leave him here though. Glad I never had the heart ta’ throw him away.”

“You had a doll,” she mused, her smile soft and sad and he chuckled a fearful sound.

“Loved him ta bits too. He’s worn but… but he did a right job protecting me from the monsters under the bed and I thought… I thought he could take up guard again.” He hoped it came off as more of a joke than a suggestion - _if this isn’t your dream then I won’t push._

Her entire body on a plane of its own she did her best to respond, but could only move towards what pulled her, turning towards the rocking chair, squinting at the same patterns. From behind her Bog cleared his throat. “It’s made of the wood from my castle. My old castle, that is. I scavenged it up a few weeks ago- went to the old tree where we- I mean… _you remember_. It just seemed - _um_ \- seemed appropriate.” He let’s out a laugh, a weak one, tracking her with his eyes as she continues to follow along the patterns, doing his best to gage a reaction. When time passes and still nothing, his nerves get the best of him. “…Marianne…”

She hums, looking over her shoulder, amber eyes huge and questioning and surprisingly forlorn.

“Darling if it’s too soon, I mean if I did this… I know you said ye wanted ta think about it and really this was… it was just meant to be a surprise!” He tinkered off, hands waving uselessly before falling to his sides. “That’s… that’s all.” He looked round the room. She stared at him. So completely nervous in his reveal, his face had bunched up, lines clear and old. But the smile still lingered, and thought it faded it was far too easy to catch onto the gleam in his eyes, one she was sure had taken up residence while he’d been arranging the room. He’d heard children’s laughter and he’d been fast to follow it, making sure to include her in every day dream and fantasy and erratic beat of a heart that couldn’t break out of his chest quick enough.

She was in the butterfly patterns and the swords. She was in the filigree of green luminescence against the ceiling. She was in the way the alcove windows let in light and the worry on his face and she wondered what he expected her reaction to be.

 _How can you even stand to hold it at night and let him touch you and think that that thing is worth the love of a beauty such as yourself._ She hears the words again and can almost see them once more on Bog’s face. Because he’s scared too. Of what could happen, of what she’ll say, and the lead in her gut tells her that it has something to do with worrying whether she’s willing to risk children who will be beautiful because everything he touches seems to bear his mark and he doesn’t wish for them to carry it.

 _How can you bear to touch it_.

And she looks at him again, framed by what light is provided, worrying his bottom lip, rocking on his heels. The two of them, standing in a nursery he made, not to bribe or guilt. But because of reasons she couldn’t fathom, innocent and perfect and gorgeous enough to leave silent. 

 _How can you bear to touch it_ , they’d asked her with eyes alone.

 _Because I love him_. And with that the voices waddle away to their corner to appear later in time, hanging their heads in defiance of something they could never truly defeat.

There was no grinding her teeth to reach out. And there wasn’t a flinch or a wince whenever his claws landed upon her skin. She’d never bared the weight of sinners to touch a devil. She’d merely found a path into darkness and hoped he’d brought a light. And there would always be shadows - _and oh how they danced like puppets in the back of her mind_ \- but she was learning to love how those made the flames brighter.

“Marianne… do ye-” He’s silenced by a kiss, and it’s all the answer he needs.

Her leg winds round his waist and his hands are there, lifting her off the ground and propping her against them. Their kisses are furious, and she doesn’t even notice when he begins to walk them back to the hallway. Not until her hands begin to travel and he stops them with shivering fingers. “Not- mmph- yet,” he murmured against her lips. “ _Bedroom_.” If he meant to make that word sound so completely guttural than thank the Gods for it, because the lilt rolling off his tongue was throaty and rich and she bucked her hips to show just how much appreciation she had. It sent him into another growl and the hairs at the back of her neck were sent into a standing ovation.

“Bedroom,” she agreed with a nod, nibbling at his ear.

They were going to need to fill the nursery up at some point. They might as well start as soon as possible.

* * *

“I put it near our room,” he had explained to her after, dragging fingers up and down her arms, still carrying the telltale signs of slight punctures only his fangs could provide. She watched him with content written in poetry across her face, humming, snuggling in her spot leaned against his chest. She had wound their fingers together, observing differences without really looking for anything.

“To hear them if they start crying at night.”

“Crying, laughing, shouting guilty parties over a squabble.” Because he had imagined it all in every carving and design and flaw and painstakingly planned detail. And standing in the doorway he had remembered easily shivering at the prospect of hearing laughter tinker bout the corners like Fairies breaking through windows. One of them had shouted a name his way in a voice filled with futures, and he’d decided very quickly that he’d like nothing more than to take it and be called it forever.

“I think I’d like to hear that,” she dragged her fingers across his, watching the boney knuckles twitch and the talons glint. She had scratches across her back given to her by those very same, and her father had been horrified when she’d accidentally let the shoulder of her shirt slip, revealing an angry red line- an accident that Bog had apologized for until the stars had fallen from the sky, and had to be coerced into touching her again after she’d practically dragged him back to bed. Telling her father that things like that heal and that sometimes mistakes are made was easier than explaining that the claws, at the end of the day, had never hurt her. And they were the same that wound round her waist while she slept and tucked flowers in her hair. And more than ever she had imagined hands twice the size of her own cradling things that breathed with resemblance to first meetings and forbidden alliances. “To hear laughter, I mean.”

“So would I.”

“Hey, Bog?”

“Hmm?”

“You’d make a really great Dad.”

He’d replied to that by kissing her senseless.

* * *

They learned it too late. By then there had been color schemes and names and teases back and forth and then _waiting_.

“It’s going to be a girl,” Bog told her once, leaning over the table.

“Boy,” she shot back confidently. “Can’t have you outnumbered, now can I?”

“But then you’ll be outnumbered.”

“Yeah, well, unlike some, I can handle it.”

“Clever wench.”

“Fight me.” She’d paused. “You never answered. Which would you prefer?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Doesn’t matter a bit, Tough Girl. S’long as they’re as wonderful as you.”

“Smart ass,” she mumbled over her blush.

_And waiting._

“Even if it is a girl,” she told him one day, staring up at the ceiling, smiling confidently  at him, “I think I’d like to keep her in blue.”

“It’s gonna be a girl,” he sang back before fluttering his gaze towards her. “An’ what was that last part?”

“I’m dressing her, if it _is_  a her, which it _wont be_ , in blue.”

He looks at her, his claws moving to trace a path against her shoulder. They’d been at it again, for what must have been the fifth time that week, and it was just as glorious as the first. With still no sign of life they’d taken to talking about the future in bits and pieces and now, naked beneath silken moss, she snuggled against him, nodding, her hair ticking against scales.. “Blue.”

“Mmmhmm…”

“Why blue?”

“Because blue is the best color.”

“I rather thought you’d choose purple and I’d have ta fight ye about it.” Not that he would have put up much of a fight. He had become fond of the color. It was one of his favorites now, and he’d found himself drawn to anything of its likeness.

But she just shook her head, making a point to stare into his eyes and cast him a genuine smile. “No. Blue sounds good.”

And he shrugged, not understanding but not one to argue trivial points like the values of the color blue, instead moving to wrap his arms around her, her giggles and faux annoyance -really, again? Thought you’d be tired of me by now!- doing nothing to dissuade him as he fell into a rhythm and she followed along in time and the two of them hoped and wished and wanted together.

 _And so much damn **waiting**_.

At one point she tells Bog, nudging him with a smile that’s fake and large and all teeth, that Fairies have never been good at waiting for things. But there’s no tease when he takes her in his arms and kisses her temple, face buried into her hair as if to hide away, and his blue eyes grow so sad and she knows what he’s thinking and wants to hate him for it.

“I know that, love,” he murmurs back, and his eyes grow sadder. She can’t be angry at him. He wants just as much as she does.

But he’s breaking faster.

And that just makes her want to hate him more.

So they try again.

* * *

There was something wrong. There had to be something wrong. So she tells him one day, without using those words - _wrong, fault, scared, chance_ \- that she’s going to see her Kingdom’s healers. Perhaps they can tell them something. Maybe news. Maybe something they’ve missed. And he doesn’t know why his stomach sinks or his eyes sting or his future darken, but he reaches for her anyway and tells her that he’ll go along all the same.

“We’ll be okay,” she says, squeezing his hand. “We just have to try again. Like we always do.”

“Like we always do, love. _Always_.”

And together they venture off.

And together they sit in a clay Fairy hut that’s far too small for Bog’s stature and even smaller once the reeling of possibilities start to weight on them, and it gets harder to breathe. And at one point he wonders if he’s forgotten altogether.

Maybe it’s when the doctor gives them an odd look.

Or maybe it’s when the time is passing by too slowly and they should have known by then, why didn’t they know.

Or maybe it’s just the end. And pages close and a resolution can’t be found and there’s fatality in those final aching familiarities of a book ending its story.

“I’m sorry,” the healer tells them. “It just isn’t _possible_.”

And he doesn’t know what to do when they leave numb and lost and emptied like two hollow vessels. They stop at the border, beneath the Primroses, the tall plants swaying to and fro in the pleasant breeze, sheltering them in the static shade, pinkish hues dappling against her skin and his scales, and for once they both look soft underneath the light of false affections.

“This can’t be it…” She speaks first, her fists clenched by her side. “ _Goddammit_ , Bog, _this can’t fucking be it_.”

“Marianne-”

“ _No_! I’m not… I can’t _do_ this! I’m not going to- they tell us we can’t be together all the time!” She hisses it through her teeth, and her fingers twitch, as if wanting to tear out every strand of hair, one for each denial, promise of failure, act of betrayal. “But we fight it! Every time!”

“Marianne, this isn’t-”

“I’m not going to take this lying down, Bog. They can’t _do_ this to us!”

And he wants to tell her that this one time its all different. This isn’t tearing them apart through politics or government. This isn’t because of outer beauty or the size of his heart. This isn’t the seasons, the wind or the flowers that turn into potions meant to make young Fae sing into the depths of a emptied palace. This is simply the way things were. The way things are.

But then she looks up at him with so much desperation and hope, and he can’t help but realize that he still carries his own. So he nods. “We’ll do it, love,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around her, making sure to tuck her face away so she couldn’t watch his fall, “We always do.”

* * *

Passionate nights begin to spread apart and the longer it takes to find some semblance of a chance the less they talk about it. And soon, even the passion lacks what it needs, and there is only the two of them, bodied combined, moving to a rhythm of a want that does nothing and feels as empty as it is cracked. 

On the last night, moon high above but invisible under a slatted windows, she’s positioned atop him, her breaths labored and short and furious, her hands fisted into sheets, brow against scaled shoulder, listening to the rumbles of affection that sound far more like a eulogy. She doesn’t comment on the way he grips at her for anchorage or how furious she is that he needs it. She doesn’t talk about how she needs him, but no matter how close, how much, she’s still hollow. She doesn’t ask if he can feel her leaving. If he’s close enough to her, around her, in her, to know that she’s quickly beginning to wither. 

She doesn’t tell him that she’s become untouchable.

And he doesn’t say anything when what tears she has slip down his arm in searing trails, just holding her as tightly as he can to make sure she knows he’ll never let go.

And after, they lie silent in each others arms, wondering without question marks. 

In the morning she’s gone.

His hands are replaced by her own when days go by without seeing one another, and what used to be her side of the bed stands alone and cold and still neatly made. He always lumps the covers together without much thought at all, but she had a habit of folding over corners and tucking in sides and smoothing out wrinkles, and he hasn’t changed it, arm draped over where a body used to lie.

It’s after two weeks that he snaps.

The moon is full overhead- huge and mocking in its nostalgia, and it leaks through the panels of boarded windows. He’s tried to shut it out before, but tonight of all nights it seems fixed on reaching him and the place beside him, still vacant and cold. He wakes up when he rolls over to reach for her, only to have his claws dig into empty space, and the moonlight peels his eyes open to remind him of just how much he’s lost.

And he can’t take it anymore.

The corridors are empty, and he stalks them, moving through with purpose and a scowl of the worst kind. Fists clenched, nails biting into palm and he can feel blood spring up in pearls. No one stops him. And he doesn’t know why he wishes someone would.

The nursery doesn’t take long to reach. And for the longest time he stands in the entrance, staring in from underneath hooded eyes. There’s no more laughter. He’s heard so much of it in this place he’d created. But for once there’s nothing, and when he steps inside, grief hidden underneath each practiced, angry footfall, he wonders why he’d even heard it at all.

He observes each piece as if they’re trapping him. The crib and the rocking chair both watch on with silent trepidation while Grumby, black stone eyes shimmering in the leftover light, sighs into the darkness as if he’s quite aware himself but couldn’t do much about it. Years of faithful service can do that, and it’s his time anyway. So when the first swipe of a claw arches out the worn protector doesn’t flinch.

The crib splinters easily, butterflies and swords taking flight only to land with a resounding crunch against the walls, falling to the ground in pieces. His next roar sends slashes across the wall, and his wings twitch to life. He’s everywhere and nowhere at once. His skin burns and everything is freezing and he hates this portal he’s put himself into. There’s no more laughter because there’s no more chance of it, and in the darkest corners he can hear children’s screams remembered from times his face had done nothing but what it was supposed to do.

Too _hideous_ …

Why had he even thought-

The rocking chair is next, thrown against the wall, his howl of rage helping it along until he’s snapping what’s survived in curled talons and drawing tally marks of how many times on every inch of the room. The blankets are slashed and the lights are shattered until they fall round him like lost stardust and he stands in their static wreckage, towering. There’s another roar, fangs displayed, body hunched, shoulder rattling, and he stalks like the predator he is until Grumby is in his grasp, hands already around his frail, worn neck, eyes looking up with forgiveness planned in their gaze-

The delicate touch against his shoulder stops him. He let’s out a warning growl, a snarl, a snap of cruel teeth, but retreats just as fast and the monster skitters underneath the bed once more, peeking out to inspect a weakness it had never counted on. Suddenly the red is bleeding to purple and he’s no longer alone.

She’s smaller than he remembered, and he towers over her cruelly, fangs and claws all out in display, chest still heaving sending scales and plates into a symphony of chitters and low, doubtful whispers. Grumby swings in his hand, claw marks forever tattooed on a delicate skin.

“Bog.” She says it hesitantly, but she isn’t scared. Not when her eyes are huge and sad, her hand still resting against his arm. She looks like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t. She’s hurting. She’s hurting, and he stands above her as if his pain is somehow worse. She hasn’t abandoned him from anger, and her side of the bed isn’t as much empty as it’s been hidden from. And he’s been oh so selfish. And now he stands in the wreckage of it all looking far too much Goblin beside one who is all too much Fairy- small and scared and ashamed of things she can’t control.

“I’m sorry…” she whispers, hand splayed on her stomach to protect what can’t be there. “Bog, I’m-”

He’s off his hastily made throne of destruction in a moment, his heavy feet smashing through another splintered beam and she jumps back at the noise, but he has her in an embrace before she can go farther and there’s only darkness and him and her and the smell of rain and turned earth and Bog. Scales prick through her clothes and fangs grace her neck and claws etch apologies against her spine and she has to stop herself from crying because she’s missed it all too much to remember just how. “ _No_.” He holds her tighter, speaking muffled notes into her hair. “No, love… none of this is your fault. You’ve nothing to apologize for.”

“I wanted… I _wanted_ to…”

“I know…”

“ _There’s nothing I can do_ …”

“I know.” Then, after silence, he pushes her back and she tries to catch the odd spark of an idea that’s brewing behind the sheen of his eyes. “But… perhaps there is something that we can do. We’ll figure this out, love. We always figure it out.” Because they were Bog and Marianne. They had defied the odds being together, and they’d do it again. They’d find a way because it was simply the way they had to work -needed to work. For had there not been two such beings more stubborn then perhaps a union so strong would have never found itself created.

And that same stubbornness shines through with a demand for answers. She’ll never tell him but her trust goes beyond simple falls into thorn bushes. For if there was ever wanted it she could ask for the moon and watch him take out a ladder and climb a stairway to the stars just to see her smile and turn the earth if it could reverse time and make everything right if he knew it would make her happy. “… what…” she asked, pressing her face into his neck. But he just shakes his head, kissing a steady pattern down her temple.

“For now… for now just stay with me?” A simple request for lonely nights.

She’d had enough of them too. “Always.”

Despite the pain, they stand in that room until the sun comes up and what has been lost, touched by the first glares of dawn, look as if they’re on fire as everything in their lives burns down.

From the floor, Grumby watches it all in silent and sorrowful resignation, and would continue to look on even as Marianne dragged Bog to their bed, waiting in the shattered ruins of laughter for it to be his turn to go. It’d be better than being put into the dark again. 

Even in the darkness, he knows, there’s still _chances_. 

The child who used to grip him tight at a fathers shouts and a borders closing and a realization of difference and fearsome cracks of thunder has never been one to wait for the second wave of sky to open up. And so he’ll wait as long as it takes before another storm can pass and the noise can die and he can be there again to watch grief be what drowns them all. 

Grumby had seen too many storms. He hoped this one would be the last. 

He’s put away into the darkness after that. But he doesn’t mind.  

* * *

There’s sadness. There’s pain. There’s loss of hope.

But in all of it there is something still glimmering.

Her side of the bed is once more filled and kisses adorn her body like the most delicious of scars. Meals are no longer spent sitting alone, and the sound of sword against staff, sparks flying, takes up the empty space in the castle and in the two beings that occupy it.

And through the retreat back into normalcy that need once more finds itself growing.

He is the first to suggest it, hesitantly, one night after a spar. She’s standing before him, beautiful as always, wiping sweat from her brow and turning her sword this way and that under the dim lights, watching for any imperfections that only she seems to be able to find. And he stands near her, clawed and fanged- a dragon and a Princess.

“I… I have been thinking,” he started off slowly, twirling his staff hesitantly in his right hand.

She looked up and blinked from under heavy lashes. “Careful, Bog King. Thinking’s a dangerous thing, don’t you know that?”

He exchanged a wry smile, but his is shaky and he hoped she didn’t notice. “Yes… well… still, I’ve been thinking about… about children.” Marianne stiffened, cheeks flushing, and Bog knew right then and there that he’d messed up. Perhaps it had been too soon after all to speak about it. It had always been a sore spot for him, but he’d forgotten to consider just how hard the blow had hit her. Cheeks flushing he waved his free hand through the air. “We don’t have to talk about it! I- I-um… I just thought that- I mean if you don’t want to I understand-”

“No! No, I didn’t- I mean I didn’t mean to…” her hand outstretched, as if she wanted to grab hold of his fingers, but in the end she dropped the arm with an unceremonious _whump_. “I want to talk about it, Bog. I… I do. But, I mean- it’s just-”

“I know.”

“It’s-”

“Yeah.”

There was a silence between them. Then again, their silences were never the most silent, and the shy, careful smiles they passed along in it had a world of words all their own. _What are we doing, and how in the hell are we going to stand up from all of this_.

“What if…” she looks up, curious. And maybe scared. For it was odd to find long ago that the King of the Dark Forest possessed more hope than one small Fae could in their lithe body. And it still terrified her how willing he was to let himself break.”… what if it wasn’t our own?” He asks, tasting ever vowel. Her face shifts and he watches it carefully. Her sword takes a turn around the air, twisting against her hand, a trick he’s taught her long before and now has become a habit during the heavier of silences.

“You mean- you’re thinking we should… _adopt_?” The word is almost foreign to her, like the first time pronouncing the odd lilts and rolls of a language she’d only heard from the fluent who pass like ghosts, but she’s left in a pause when Bog nodded, fangs flashing out to nibble on a well worn lip. She breathed in deep, chest expanding, and her exhale was one to knock the world off its orbit. “It won’t be easy. I mean… what kind of child do we even get? Does the Dark Forest even _have_ an orphanage?”

“Not officially,” he shrugged. “Our system is a bit more… wild, compared to yours, I suppose. Parents here don’t really _give away_ children. They simply… give them up. If you aren’t strong enough-”

“Survival of the fittest,” she interrupted sourly, and he shrugged once more against her obvious distaste. Despite learning about one another, there would always be things that hit the wrong way. “So… what? Do we just pick a child off the ground and walk home with it?”

“I know you’re being smart,” he shot back, “but that is one very real suggestion.”

“You’re joking.”

“I hardly joke on matters of my Kingdom.” he sniffed, propping his staff up against the wall, pointing a glower down at the Fae standing across from him. “If a child is too weak to survive, then it is left. It’s simply the way of some of my more feral denizens.”

Marianne hummed. “And… if we can’t find a Goblin child?”

He squirmed. “You have… other options, I suppose?”

“I do. And you know them.”

“… I do…”

“Adopting a Fairy child wouldn’t be-”

“Marianne.”

“Come on, Bog, it wouldn’t be bad and you know it!” He gave her a withering look and she scoffed. “I swear! Sometimes this fear of yours is the worst! If we get a baby they aren’t going to be _afraid_ of you because _you’re_ all they know!”

“And if we can’t get a bairn? What then? An older child- to see my hideous face-”

She let out a sound like a clap of thunder or a branch snapping at the middle. “I could punch you sometimes, you know that?” He twitched back a moment, almost waiting for it to happen, relaxing when it never did. “First of all, you aren’t _hideous_ , second of all why on Earth would you think that and don’t you _dare_ interrupt me, I swear I’m three fingers away from a fist right now.” He snapped his mouth shut with a pop. “And besides! If we get someone who’s older they aren’t going to do anything because they’re yours! They’re your child!”

“So… you’re saying that… Goblin or Fairy… they’ll like me?”

“No, I’m saying they’ll _love_ you. You aren’t going to just entertain kids at some event. You’re adopting a child. I think you’re forgetting that. That whatever happens, if we do this, there isn’t any turning back. We’ll have a kid. It’s the same as having one of our own. That’s it. There isn’t any discussing whether they’ll like you and I can’t hold your hand if anything goes wrong-”

“I know that-”

“Then why are you so scared!”

“Because I’m not suited for this, that’s why!”

She’s taken aback a by the outburst, its seething a reminder of the haste in truth and the years of slow, burning reminders. And so she’s honest when she replies, because she’s put out enough flames at this point and she’s become an expert at fanning what needs to be built and snuffing the ones that have found their own life.

“You’d be a great dad.”

He rolled his eyes, but nerves quaking are determined to let her see what that alone has done to him. “How do you-”

“Because, Bog, despite what you seem to think about yourself I know no one else who surprises people with nurseries and practices bedtime stories in the mirror when they think their wife is in the bath.” She’s seen everything, and moments in front of mirrors with his old children’s stories propped in his elbow while he reads to someone who is as much a reflection as he desires are thrown back into his mind and he can’t help but want to hide away. His flush spread fast and he was left nearly as purple as her wings in a few short seconds, scrambling for words and excuses that couldn’t seem to find any grounding.

“Uh… um… I-”

“You’re really good at making voices, by the way. But your Big Bad Beetle could use some work. Stick to the three little ladybugs. They suit you.”

“Uh-”

“But that’s not the _point_. The _point_ is this is something you want. And it’s something that _I_ want. And that’s it.”

“… It is…?”

“Yeah. It is. There’s really nothing all too complex about this, Bog. You’d be a great dad. Because you’re kind. And you’re smart. And you’re lovable. And sometimes you make me eat my vegetables at dinner. And those are all basically the qualifications, so I’d say you’re pretty ready.”

“Copious amounts of sugar is not a proper eating style, love.”

“Under protest. The point is,” she grabbed the back of his neck, winding her fingers against scales and tugging him close, “you need to stop thinking of stuff like that. Because if you dig yourself too deep I wont be able to get out. And then how will I manage.”

“You’re a Tough Girl.”

“Nah. I’m scared.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not Tough.”

“And doesn’t mean you’re not suitable.”

“Touche.” 

And so, with a wary door opening on hinges that have yet to be oiled in their confidence, the two of them begin a search for someone who needs to be a reflection.

* * *

When the search for a Goblin Child turned up without anything in the first few weeks, Marianne had finally let out the dreaded words he’d had no interest even _imagining_  slip from her mouth.

“I’ll go talk to the Fairy Orphanage.”

He’d wanted to argue. Wanted to scream and deny and _hate_  as much as any Goblin could do. But the look in her eyes was genuine. After so long there was something there. And so he’d found himself nodding despite it all.

“Okay…” he pressed a kiss to her brow, hoping she couldn’t feel him shaking.

“You sure you’re ready for this? You might be the first Goblin to have a Fairy as a kid.”

“I’m the first Goblin to have be married to one too. I may as well see how far we can stretch their damned imaginations.”

And so it was all arranged, and the next morning Marianne would go to meet the matron alone.

Bog wasn’t ever sure what happened at that meeting, but what he did know was that she passed him by without so much as a hello kiss before he heard the door to their room slam, the first scream caught by the moss of a pillow. She would not appear until a few minutes later, pink in the face, her hair a tattered mess.

“Uh-” he swallowed, “So I take it we won’t be going there.”

“ _Oh_ , we’ll be going. There’s no way in hell we’re not going.”

“Right,” he nodded, steadying his staff in his grip, knowing well ahead that her sword would be delivering the first blow sooner than later, anger coursing hot and electric. “So when-”

“ _As soon as possible_ ,” she snarled, and the _shing_ of her sword said in no uncertain terms that her act of stubbornness was not one built from an ego, and would be what carried them forward as it always had done in the past.

* * *

There was one orphanage in the Fairy Kingdom. A small hutch a good ways outside of the castle, it stood between a gracious glen of daisies and a small bubbling stream an acre or so out. A scenic space, it featured all the ins and outs of a place that the younger generations would find perfect for playing. Soft newling grass, pools of dewy water, and a cluster of rocks just high enough to climb and be King. And high enough to look over the taller of the plants and see the dark shadow of the forest in the distance.

“Most places for children have something like that,” Marianne whispered to him, fiddling with her fingers. “Somewhere to see the Dark Forest. To make sure the kids know it’s there.”

“Why on _Earth_ do _that_? I thought your ki- _Fairies_ were afraid of the place.”

“Yeah.” she murmured. “Exactly.” Bog’s shoulders hunched, and she reached out and gave his hand a squeeze.

It was the Matron who met them at the door. Grey hair drawn up like an acorn cap, tight and well formed on a body strait as a water reed. Blue morning-glory dress immaculate and pressed, face steely and strict, she looked at the pair standing in front of her door with nothing short of cruel humor.

“Oh… _you came_.” She pulled the words out like a wire, cutting deep and raw. “How… _unexpected_.” All the last few words of her sentences, Marianne couldn’t help but notice, was built like the bend of a stream, slow and lazy and _terribly_  unfortunate for the rocks that bubbled and gurgled and _dragged_. 

“I told you we’d be here. And we are. I thought I’d made that _very clear_ when I met with you-”

“Yes, yes, you made it _exceptionally clear_. In more ways than one, _Princess_. Though, I might add, it isn’t in good taste for a lady to act like such a… _Goblin_.” Neither missed the way her eyes flickered up, as if wanting to blame the thing she’d dragged with her for all the injustices of their humble world.

“We are here for Children, nothing more. As you are well aware, Madam.” If the Matron was surprised to hear Bog talk, she didn’t show it. A silvery brow raised, she regarded him with the same interest given to a lamb before the slaughter. Pity, grief, _hunger_. 

“I was made well aware. But as I told you, when you came to me yesterday and explained that you and a Goblin were interested. I wasn’t expecting… _this_.”

Remembering a time when the same was delivered from her own mouth, the stab of guilt was fierce and wrong. She swallowed it back. Today was not a day for added stresses. “I can understand your confusion,” she grinds out formally, until even her words are against the whetstone, “but as I said-”

“We’re only here to see the children. That is all,” Bog’s snarl finished, sparks flying in greeting. “We have already given you all information needed and you know full well that no dangers will befall them-”

“Mr. Bog-”

“Bog _King_ -”

“Yes, of course. You see, here at this orphanage we take great pride in the care of our children. We hand them over to nice Fairy parents. And… well… can’t you simply see it in your reasoning that there is an issue with this?”

“An issue with- you already promised!” If it wouldn’t have dampened their chances Marianne would ahve pulled her sword, but her fingers twitched by the pommel all the same, longing for blood. “I spoke with you! You knew what this adoption entailed!”

“When you said Goblin, Princess, I didn’t quite assume that you meant _Goblin_.”

“What the bloody hell does that mean?” Bog snarled. The Matron hummed a slight sound, a breeze before the storm.

“You have your insults, Majesty. We have _ours_. As I was saying, when you said Goblin I suspected something far more- _realistic_.  A brute of a husband perhaps.”

“So you would consider someone who’d-”

“I would consider a _Fairy_ , Princess. Until then all other facts of personality are to be discussed. But from what you’d told me I simply assumed that you hadn’t meant something quite as…” she searched for a word, dropping her sentence where it stood, but he could see her fiddling with _**it**_ and _**that**_ as easily as others had. “I apologize, but there’s too much of a risk.”

“A risk?”

“Of course,” she sniffed nobly, and for a moment they had to check themselves to see who was the true royal standing in the glen. The two who wished to be parents, begging at the doorstep. Or the one who stood before them with their nose perched in the air. “I am given the responsibility of caring for lives of our next generation. An arduous and most tedious task, but an important one. And I cannot simply waltz over to our council and explain that the reason one of our own has gone missing is because the Goblin I gave her too got hungry-”

“ _What_!?” Marianne flinched away from the roar, though her face contorted just as fast into something of equal rage. “Ye think I’d… I’d do _what_ to mah own child!?”

“Goblins have been known-”

“Goblins have done nothing of the sort! We dunnai treat our children the way _ye_ tell yee’re _bedtime stories_!”

“Be that as it may-”

“No! No more as it may or how it’s going to be,” Marianne stepped forward, teeth pressed into a growl. “You promised me we could see children. We came here to _find a child_. Because we want to be _parents. S_ o if you wouldn’t _mind_.”

There’s a twitch at her left eye and a new set of lines round her mouth. “I think you’ll not find what you’re looking for here. These are Fae children, King Bog-”

“Bog King.”

She sniffed again before standing to the side, gesturing out with a wide sweep of her arm. “I suppose I can’t stop you. Not even if I wanted to. But a warming,” she pointed towards him, making sure to keep herself as refined as she wanted him to see her. “Meet the children. Just please refrain from using _teeth_.”

Not that he would have ever thought of it, but he made sure to send a little growl her way as he passed. She stiffened, and her composure weakened for enough time to let out a terrified _eep_. His smile was almost poisonous as he ventured past, following Marianne through, ducking his head and tagging along through corridors, following the sound of laughter.

The laughter wouldn’t last long. 

They’d stepped into the room, large and bright and well kept. And inhabiting it, swarming in their infestation, were a dozen tiny, bright Fairies. Chasing one another around, their wings just forming against their backs, displayed through folds of perfect folds of florals, they were everything Bog couldn’t have imagined finding a place near to him. For he was never made to house light and they were never meant to be snuffed. 

Then again, his wife had always found power in the shadows. And perhaps…

 _Perhaps_ …

He was too deep in his thoughts to notice that the chattering and laughter and bright, smiling faces, had suddenly _stopped_. And all eyes were upon the both of them. Their games ceased, some still posed in perfect dances, others drawing on pressed petals, a few hanging upside down by their beds, they all had to freeze in their newest distraction. 

“Um… hey there…” Marianne had put on her best grin, moving forward cautiously. Bog followed. It had been the wrong decision, a few of the children stepping back with a whine, and he paused in his advance, already feeling the telltale lump in his throat surfacing. 

“ _Marianne_ …” he hissed, “we need ta get out. _Now_.” Watching as the children began to look towards each other, their hands, uncoordinated and messy in their fear, grabbing at one another, holding closer for a protection that would do nothing if he had chosen to-

“Goblin!” One of the tinnier children had squeaked out. 

“Marianne, I’ll only scare them, love we’ve got to-”

But she was determined. For she had not crashed through skylights to let the newest generation be cut away with shards. “No, no, no! Hey! Hey, it’s okay!” Her fingers waved through the air, “This is my husband! He’s nice! Really! He’s, I mean _we’re_ -”

But it was too late. The first sobs made way for the next and soon the entire room was an eruption of pleads and promises and scared exclamations of things that sounded eerily similar to the fairies of stories who had misbehaved and found themselves snatched up into the night. 

Before Marianne could even attempt to rectify it all, the one who had been the subject of horror spun on his heel and was out the door in a moment, screams of terror following him like breadcrumbs and apologies untethered from his throat. The dreaded woman was waiting for them, her eyes cool and stoic even as the violet winged warrior had rushed past to drag back the scaled monster with pleads of understanding and forgiveness. 

“Bog _please_!”

“Ah’m nai goin’ back inta tha’ room where those _children_ -”

“Yes. Those children. Apologies for their behavior.” The Matron drew their gazes, flicking imaginary dust from her sleeve. “They weren’t expecting you. That’s all.”

“You were supposed to inform them! You told them we were-!”

“I told them _potential parents_ were visiting today. Not a Princess with too much time on her hands to become a decent lady and her… _friend_.”

“They grew up near the border. They’ve seen Goblins,” the Princess snarled. “If you’d just let us _reason_  with them maybe they’d see that-”

“Oh they wont be seeing anything.”

“Why won’t you-!”

“Fear is a horribly good way to teach our young, Your Highness. I keep them safe anyway I can. And that _place_  was never suited for our kind. That you would try to bring us closer is repugnant.”

Marianne gripped her husbands arm, but he didn’t look eager to speak as it was, flushing past a scowl that was quickly turning silk. “Yeah, well, who asked you. Times are changing.”

“They are indeed. But stories aren’t. And fortunately for _his Kind_ , they have provided us with enough material to fill heads with warnings to last a lifetime.” Her nose lifted into the air, the Matron sniffed. “Do as you like, Princess. But know that I keep them safe here. And if all that takes if a few scary stories no matter how factual _he_ might want to pretend they aren’t, then so be it. But don’t think that _he’s_  going to be the one who changes the ending.” And for the first time the elderly woman turned towards Bog, finding blue eyes among the thorns. “We train our kind here to know what claws do. You’re better off pretending that raising a child isn’t one of them.”

And before either could respond she was bustling down the hall, her skirts swishing side to side like sands down an hourglass, leaving behind two lovers who would become one as the Thing of Fear left out where he’d come to find a place where he could grieve alone.

* * *

She found him outside, sitting on a rock looking at nothing in particular. And when he didn’t respond to his name - _Bog? Sweetie? Are you okay?_ \- she’d gone to sit by him and hope her silence would do it’s part. 

And when that didn’t work-

“I’m sorry.” She was apologizing too much for things that weren’t hers to control but all too much, for it would seem that fault was had by the act of being in love with the unlovable. But she had suggested it in the first place, thinking it a good idea to bring the Dragon to the Slayer and hope for peace. “I never meant…”

“I know, love.” But he doesn’t sound like he does know because he never will. And she doesn’t know either. Not why they’re there. Not what they’ll do. Not how anything will work out for them at all. If it even will.

And that thought, though she hadn’t dared to say it out loud, was enough to send her chest into a spasm and her eyes to blur, and nothing was clear before but at that moment she’s scared she’ll never see again. But she’s a Fairy, and they’re supposed to be light. And hope. And right then she needs to do her job most.

So she sidled closer, hand falling against him. “We’ll try again, Bog.” She rubbed slow circles against his spine, pressing her lips against the side of a thorned cheek. He hadn’t shaved in days, it would seem, and the pinpricks arched into her kiss. “I promise, we’ll keep trying. As long as it takes.”

He merely nodded, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. The darkness didn’t do much to help, but it kept him from seeing the world that had been so cruel to both of them. Everything screamed at him to go to her, embrace her, she was suffering just as much as he was, standing radiant in a land that was made for her. The perfume, the sun, the laughter and chittering birds did their part to emphasize what she was, and the Goblin in him shied away, winning. Darkness. Quiet. Hiding away. So he pressed his hands harder into his eyes, waiting to see the telltale white spots appear, tracing them against a backdrop of past grievances that he’d already had to atone for- punishments fitting their crimes.  “Perhaps…” he began, tired and worn, “we should just see if we can find Goblin children again.”

“If that would make it easier-”

He nodded, and the darkness followed.

“Okay…” She placed another kiss on his cheek, waiting for him to reciprocate. And when he didn’t, still sitting stoic and broken in his spot, she drew back. “I’m going to have a word with the Matron. I’ll be back… okay?” Nothing. She let out a sigh, her hand making one last round against the plates on his back before wandering off.

And once more he was left alone.

Letting out a breath he peeled his hands away, squinting into the late afternoon light. The sun was too high above and there weren’t any trees to catch the light and keep it from burning at him. The birds pierced a happy tune and brooks bubbled. Everything bright and perfect and happy and _awful_.

He sunk back against his spot, ready to wait for the return of his wife so they could leave the godforsaken place for a home that was suitable for a beast like-

“Are you a Goblin?”

The noise, coming from somewhere nearby, was startling to say the least and he lifted his head, blinking in the brightness of the still mockingly beautiful afternoon. 

He blinked once. Then twice. Not sure what to say. So instead he merely stared and tried to make sense of the closeness between the Spider and the Fly. 

The speaker was unaware of his dilemma it would seem, and tilted their head, staring back at him with nothing more than a few curious furrows. She was carrying a doll in her hand, a scrap of fabric with stones for eyes and odd stitching for what must have been a mouth, it was gruesome at best and looked otherworldly held by the ethereal thing. 

“Wha-?”

“I said are you a Goblin?” She was a tiny thing. Barefoot and with smears of mud over her hands and legs from jumping in puddles like portals and clothes ripped from misuse. Huge eyes the color of rain pelting at windows gaze at him with such _intent_  that he nearly staggers back. And even if she is a Fairy, though he has yet to see the proof from atop her spine, she looks more like a pixie, with a dress of pink cosmos flowers and a brightness about her that would have made the sun jealous it couldn’t be on earth to burn its own majesty. The kind of creature one never sees in darkness because light needs to feed off of _something_. 

She tilted her head further until he was sure she’d topple from the weight. But she stayed standing, neck bent like a broken blade of grass.

“… uh…” he cleared his throat, pushing past the flush clinging nettles down the ridged and spiked column of his throat. “I-uh… I am… yes…”

“Really?” She dropped her head, and the doll in her grasp sunk happily into her side, her arm holding him secure and safe. “Missus says that Goblins eat Fairies.” Shifting from foot to foot, the child watched him without fear, but with a wariness that was clear and smart. Her curls brushed the side of her shoulder -they’d have to be cut soon, Marianne had explained that to him long ago, all Fairies losing their long hair by five or six, trimmed into management so as not to tangle with wings- and hooked against the collar of her dress. “Are you gonna eat me?”

He scoffed, hands finally moving down to rest heavily against his knees. “I don’t have plans to, no. Apologies if I’ve disappointed you.”

Too young to fully grasp sarcasm the girl simply glared, or at least she tried to. Her effort was valiant, that was to be sure. Her face screwing up, pinching as if she’d taken a rather large bite of something awful and sour. “Good,” she said curtly, “because I would punch you if you tried.”

“Would you now?”

She nodded, showing him one tiny fist that couldn’t do much of anything. In her other hand the doll swung uselessly. “I’m really so, _so_ strong. Once I runned all the way over there and back over before all the other boys because they told me that girls were stupid and slow and so I beated them all and one of them pushed me down and I kicked him in his stupid face.” Her smile dropped for a moment. “I got in trouble because he started crying but I didn’t cry because I’m a big girl!”

Bog snorted, and his mouth twitched up. “Well, then I shall have to stay far from you, shan’t I?”

The girl nodded happily, two rows of tiny squared teeth peeking out at him through a smile. “Uh huh! Do you fight?”

“Sometimes.”

“Really!”

He nodded, gesturing to his staff, and the girl looked up at the winding metal with eerie fascination. “A King must know how to fight with dignity, child. Remember that.”

“You’re a King!”

“Aye. I am.” He almost expected her to curtsy at the knowledge. Or at least a sign of trained respect from someone living under the rule of a similar title. But none came, and she looked at him as if he’d unraveled a ball of twine and held the strings of the universe between two fingers- confused, befuddled, mesmerized.

“Oh.” Was all she said.

“Yes…” he answered awkwardly.

The child didn’t seem to know how to grasp the concept of royalty, still stunned at the fact that there was someone visiting her when before she’d only had her dolly and what few children were there for company. So she evicted herself from the subject altogether with a speed that nearly left him behind, smiling back a huge smile filled with tiny, squared teeth, the two sitting in front far too big for her mouth. “My name is Clover an’ I just turned this many!” She held up three fingers, glared at them, switched to two and then back to three with happy resolution. “An’ this is my dolly an’ his name is Stubbs an’ he just turned this many too!”

“Did he really now!”

“Uh huh! Missus says that dolly’s can’t have birthdays but I said they can.” She held the little bundle of sticks and burlap and colored twine closer, hugging it fiercely to her chest. “An… an she wants me ta stop bringing him places but I don’t like ta go nowhere without Stubbs because he fights off bad guys.”

“Well then, he seems like much too important of a chap to leave lying about.”

She beamed, holding Stubbs even closer still. “Do you fight off ba’guys!”

“From time to time, between afternoon tea and supper I suppose.”

Her fit of giggles could have sent him into an early molt, jolting when the sound met his ears, surprising and without warning. She didn’t notice his temporary fear and instead clapped her hands in joyful command. “You’re silly! I like you!” And just like that, he was in the good graces of a child. _Huh_ , was all he had to ponder on, because he always imagined it would have been a little bit harder than this. But she was too fascinated with her new so called friend to notice his silence, bouncing towards him on pointed toes. “Do you have other Goblin friends! Are they coming here to say hi! Do they like Stubbs! Oh!” She seemed to remember something vitally important, tilting back to look up at him with comical flexibility. “What’s your name, Mr. Goblin?”

“Bog King.” He extended a clawed hand, smiling even brighter when the child took it without a second thought, her hand dwarfed by his. She did her best to give it a shake, but it turned into an awkward wiggle of her arm and he kept back a barking laugh. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Clover.” She giggled again, high and shrill and chirping, and he was sure that if she had wings on her back they’d be fluttering right about then.

Then again… where _were_ her wings-

“Do you wanna play with me!” She cut away at his thoughts, those grey eyes blinking up the thing that was Bog. 

“Um… I mean… I don’t know-”

Whether he had answered yes or no wasn’t of importance, and she was already waddling and tripping past him on tiny, uncoordinated legs to retrieve a handful of sticks and delicate white flowers. “Here!” She fumbled with her collection, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, finally presenting him with a half made bundle that might have been a circlet if it didn’t resemble more of a bird’s first attempt at a nest. “You need to wear this because you’re a King and King’s have crowns! Where’s your crown? Did you leave it at home with your mommy?” She paused. “Do you have a mommy? Does she wear a crown?”

“I hate crowns. King’s should nai wear them. Power is in the stance, not the headwear.” There was a brief silence before he added, “An aye. I do have a mother. And she doesn’t wear a crown. Don’t want that head’a hers ta grow anymore.”

“She has a big head? Like an egg?”

He held back a snort. “Nay. Just a big mouth.”

The girl thought about what he said, nodded sagely, and then motioned with one finger for him to stoop. When he did he found himself very much in possession of a crown, plopped on top of his head. It slipped down and he caught it before a stick could poke him in the eye. “Uh-”

“Then _I’ll_ be the King because you have the crown. You can be the Princess.”

“Princesses can be fierce too, yunno.”

“Yeah! But they get to wear a pretty crown and you’re more prettier than a King an’ so I’ll be the King and you be the Princess!” Before he could flush any further, rip the crown from his head and stomp off in faux offense, Stubbs was being shoved into his face. “He’s the dragon! I have to save you! Now go and be super scared because if you’re not super scared then I won’t believe you, and Stubbs is a very ferocious dragon but he has trouble sometimes so you have to help him by being scared. I’ll scare you!” She bared her tiny teeth and let out a fearsome, “rawr!”. And then, realizing her mistake, she bent in closer and whispered, “but don’t be really scared because it’s pretend.”

“Ah…” he nodded, smiling a real, true smile for the first time in what seemed like far too long. With a quick flick of his fingers he adjusted the crown on his head. “Understood. Now… where should my tower be? A princess must, as a rule, have a proper tower.” He thought another moment. “And a sword.”

“That tulip can be your tower and I don’ have a sword yet because I’m not big enough so jes’ pretend you have a big axe because that’s more scarier.”

“I like the way you think, girl.”

She was already running off to find her throne - _for a King must know how to sit atop a throne_ \- her doll happily dragging on the ground behind. “C’mon Stubbs! Be ferocious! I gotta save the Princess!”

After three games, it became clear that the Princess was just going to save himself. But honestly, what was anyone expecting? Stubbs was simply not in the mood to be a dragon that day, as Clover explained, consoling the doll with a few pats on the head. And he was feeling so blue because he couldn’t get into character. Besides, the Princess was a little taller than the dragon had been expecting. Stubbs wasn’t quite sure what to do with that.

And also, as she explained in full, Princess Bog had been given a weapon and Stubbs was scared.

So for the fourth round Bog promised not to use the weapon and became the good little damsel that Stubbs required.

It was at Round Five that Marianne finally stepped out of the doorway. Winded, ruffled, rage still hanging in tatters off her mind, she’d gone to greet the Goblin who’d waited only to find-

“Ah! Marianne! You’re back. Meet Miss Clover.” 

Marianne blinked. Then she blinked again. Because there simply wasn’t a way. _There wouldn’t have been a way_. And yet there he was, standing near a Fairy - _a young, tiny, slip of a Fairy_ \- wearing a crown atop his head a smile on his face and the air was filled with laughter of children and no broken beds or dull eyes of past comfort blankets to seize moments and suffocate them in their hold. Just Bog and a Child and a field and a crown and laughter. “Clover!” His voice broke her out and she shook her head before smiling awkwardly at the young girl. “Meet my wife, Marianne!”

But there’s no need for introduction. Not really. Not when there’s recognition in her eyes and she’s bouncing excitedly, exclaiming, “I know her! She’s the real Princess!”

“The real Princess?” The girl seems to understand the confusion, turning to Marianne, who was doing nothing more than staring at the scene unfolding before her eyes.

“ _Yes_. You’re the _real Princess._ But _Bog_  is the _fake_  Princess. Because we gave him a crown and everything! And I’m the King! Do you wanna play? Because if you do you can’t be the Princess because Bog’s already the Princess.”

“It’s true,” said Bog. “I _am_ already the Princess. Find your own job.” Marianne held back a rather unprincessly snort. 

“Yeah! Find your own!” Clover parroted, bouncing. “Oh, and Stubbs is the Dragon so you can’t be that either.”

 _Stubbs_? She mouthed, and Bog motioned to the doll sitting fearsomely on his rock. She nodded, mouth quirking.

“Okay. Yeah. Sure. Mind if I be a Knight? The last one that saved the Princess wasn’t any good. I think its time I did it right.”

“Sure! But you need a helmet!”

“I need a-”

“Hold on!” And she was off, snatching up twigs from the ground. Less than a minute passed before Marianne’s short laugh reached his ears and he scowled. His blush gave him away, though, and she laughed again.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about, Bog. You look like a real princess to me.”

“You’re gonna regret that. She’s a fierce beastie. I haven’t the courage to take this off.”

“Nice crown, by the way.”

“Thanks. I think it brings out my eyes.”

“It does.”

“Yee’re gonna have ta wear one too.”

She would. Before any discussions could be had there was a flower crown made of what looked to be mud and something that could have been nettles because, as Clover explained, the spikier the thing, the better it protected. And Marianne, from her enthused response, couldn’t have agreed more. 

And she proceeded to be the best damn knight a smallish King and a floppy, stone eyed dragon and a tall Princess had ever seen. 

Her sword drawn, glinting in the sunlight, she faced the Dragon and his newfound King with fearsome determination. “Release the Princess!” Marianne demanded. 

“Never! He’s our Princess! An’ me an Stubbs, I mean _the Dragon_ , are gonna beat you up!”

“Oh _really_! Well I’ll have you know,” she added, twirling her weapon, “that I am _in love_ with the Princess. So I _have_  to save him.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s his night to make the bed,” she explained. 

“Thanks dear,” the Princess said dryly, crossing his arms. “I can _feel_  the affection.”

“Oh. And I guess it’s because he completes me or whatever too.”

“Too late. I’m already broken.”

“Well you can’t get past us! We’re evil! Rawr!” In Bog’s defense, for someone who practically _became_  the shadows that enveloped him, his height blocking out the sun in its entirety, he did a good job at cowering. “Just try!”

“Okay! I will!” And she was dropping her sword and swooping the child up, giggling like a maniac as long fingers danced up a child’s sides while she shouted, “don’t worry, Princess! I’ve almost defeated them!”

It was a vicious battle.

Bog got saved two more times. Stubbs, though a dragon, was spared. “Every dragon should have a chance to do something other than kidnap a princess,” Marianne told the girl, handing her the raggedy friend. “I think he just needs a hug.”

“I can do that!” She shrieked, bundling her dragon close.

Claws at Marianne’s shoulder, squeezing gratefully, were enough of a thanks.

* * *

They take a break when the Royal couple declares her the winner and the two of them are sitting on a large stone, watching her draw pictures in the dirt with a stick. 

“- _an then she said to me that I couldn’t do anything with a book_ ,” the child rambled on, talking about all the others who surrounded her every day. Children and Matrons alike. “An’ I said I could because I can read a whole sixteen words now! The, and, at, you, me, too, for, Clover, see, run, Stubbs, jump, hop, pop, moan an’ coital.”

Marianne nearly choked on her tongue, Bog letting out a guffaw. “ _How did you learn those last two_?” She was asking the girl, trying to slap her hand over Bog’s mouth to silence his heaving chortles.

“Missus left out one of her special books on the table at breakfast an’ I used it for reading practice!” She said proudly, then she frowned. “What does _coital_  mean anyway?”

“It means we’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“But-”

Bog, ever the saving grace, swooped in to drag the conversation back whence it came. “So! Darling! Tell us- how are you liking your time here?”

“It’s fine.”

“ _Fine_.”

Clover nodded. “The other kids aren’t always mean ta’ me an’ I have Stubbs an’ I’ve been here _forever_  an’ you can see that because all of my growing stuff is on the wall an’ I’ve grown a whole lot! Did you see all the marks! One’a the boys had a paring knife an’ he measured everyone an’ now I’m only the _second_  shortest in the house! Fluer is the shortest but I don’t like Fluer because she called me stupid once an’ I kicked her in the knee.” 

“Well, from what it sounds like, the girl deserved it.” Marianne gave him a look that said she’d rather have liked to kick him in the knee for that comment. He cleared his throat, shifting his legs out of range. “We didn’t see ye when we went in.” Bog asks all at once, watching the girl create yet another giant flower in the dust. “Were ye… hiding?”

“No. I can’t get ‘dopted. Missus kept me in one’a the rooms. I’m s’possed ta stay there an’ be good and be good means quiet but it’s really boring and Stubbs likes to play and that’s how I got out the window because he jumped. Well… I threw him. But it’s the same thing.” she told him easily, well practiced and oiled. Stubbs watched her from the ground beside a drawing of a large triangle, his potato sack body sprawled against the dirt. “Missus says I’ll stay here for a while. People used ta come more and I played with them but then Missus talked to them an’ they don’t come back anymore.” She blinked up at them both hopefully. “Will you come back? Because I want to play with you again! You’re nice! And Stubbs likes you!”

“Wait a moment. Darling, what… what does that mean exactly. You can’t be adopted.” She shrugged, obviously not keen on discussing the nature of her situation. Stubbs once more clutched tight against her chest, sewn on face smiling up at them.

“Clover?” Marianne hunched, hand gentle on her back. “Sweetheart?”

She was going to answer, still squirming in her place, suddenly far shyer than she’d started out. But her mouth did open and the explanation was at her lips-

“Clover! Get away from that, now!” It wasn’t hard to figure out what that was, and Bog snarled at the woman who had chosen the perfect moment to surface.

Clover cowered under the chastisement, squeezing her doll close, Marianne moving her hand away to turn towards Bog, rallying a defense. The Goblin was becoming quickly aware of why the poor chap was worn down - _affection and love came in droves when all you had was a single thing to shower them on._

“Apologies for keeping this girl from you, Madam,” Bog did his best not to betray his anger, stepping off the stone with a Princess at his heel, moving forward to his full height and making sure to put one, thin, thorned leg in front of the child. “She was just telling me all about the other children and-”

“A fascinating topic, truly. But it’s time for her to come back inside.” Her glare was venomous and Clover ducked behind his leg, rocking on her heels. “She’s not _supposed_ to be outside for visitors, she knows that. And _look_ at you! You’re _filthy_! We just had that dress _cleaned_.”

“Bu’ Stubbs fell out the window!” The Matron faced the girl, the child pathetically pointing towards one of the small holes in the hutch. “I had ta’ get him! Else someone might take him!”

“No one would take that thing, Clover. And if they did I’d make you a new one-”

“But Stubbs-!”

“For goodness sakes, Clover, I’m not discussing this with you! You know the rules! Inside! Go! Shoo!”

Clover’s shoulders drooped. The hand holding the doll fell to her side, and his tiny, misshapen arms scraped the dirt. Slowly she stepped out from behind Bog’s leg, twisting her fingers together in a nervous rhythm. “Bye Mr. Bog… Bye Miss Marianne. Thank you for playing with me.”

“Not at all, Miss Clover. It was a pleasure.” 

“You made Bog into an awesome Princess.” She giggled, smile wide yet again. 

He felt something tighten in his chest, his own smile fake and real all at once. “Keep practicing being a King, darling. Fight with dignity and honor.”

“I’ll beat them all! Even the boys!” She jumped on her toes, beaming up at him. “An’ they won’t be able to say anything else I’ll punch them in the face!”

“Try using that as a last resort, love. I’m sure their faces are quite punchable, but I’m not sure if that’s quite the way to make the message any clearer. And a King always puts hi- _her_  subjects first.”

“Right,” she nodded seriously, and he repressed a snort. “I’ll… I’ll see you later?”

He bowed low at the waist, prompting another string of giggles. “Till we meet again.”

She did her best to curtsy, nearly falling on her face, chirping another laugh when she caught herself just in time. “Bye! Stubbs says bye too!” Stubbs, at his owners insistence, raised an arm and wobbled it around.

“Ah yes, how could I forget Sir Stubbs. Goodbye to him as well.”

“And tell him to loosen up on the dragon thing,” Marianne quirked her lip, “He’s better suited for something less manual.”

The girl looked ready to say something back but never got the chance.

“Clover!” The Matron snapped and the girl winced. Stubbs’ arm slowly lowered, and even his permanently gleeful face seemed to sink. She nodded at the woman and slowly made her way towards the door, stopping only once to turn around and offer the royal couple another hopeful wave of her hand, tiny fingers whispering the air. And then she was gone,

“Apologies about her.” Bog heard the accursed woman, but his eyes stayed on the place the girl had left, hardly leaving, waiting for her to once more jump out, doll in hand. “She’s quite… enthusiastic. Harmless, really. But a bit too eager for her own good.”

“You never showed her to us.” It’s Marianne’s question that finally draws him away from his hopes, and he nods in earnest along with her. “Why-”

“Because she isn’t a child I show to potential parents, that’s why. And you two are hardly that as it stands. Now if you two would please step off my prema-”

“She told me that you don’t allow others to adopt her?” The Matron sighed as Bog stood his ground, rolling her eyes heavenward.

“I don’t see how that is a problem of _yours_ , Mr. Bog-”

“ _Bog_. _**King**_. And it’s a problem of mine when a child of your Kingdom is not being granted the rights of other children here! She seems perfectly fine! She’s healthy. She smiles. She’s _much_ too hopeful, what with the way you throw her about.”

“She’s different, Bog King. And unfortunately for us, unlike your… charming abode, you’ll find that we actually have standards. Now if you’d please leave. I’m sure there’s plenty of other Goblin Children who need spirited parents such as yourselves.”

“How dare you!” And Marianne is up in an instant, her fingers wild and twitching, her sword a weight begging to be lifted. “You treat us like _nothing_ , you insult a King at your doorstep and you take away a child’s right to-”

“To _what_? To live in the Darkness? To stay hidden away? My job is to keep them _safe_! And if I am to keep light where it belongs, _Princess_ , then I will turn away the gods should they wish to lock a Fairy under the shadows. Now I suggest you find more suitable matches somewhere where they’re more used to being _shut out_. But until then, I bid you farewell. Leave my property. Or so help me I’ll tell the King - _my King_ \- what you have brought here. And we are all aware of his opinion on your union _last I’d checked_.”

She’s already through the door when Bog’s roar is her reply, two creatures soaring through the air, staff and sword meeting in furious release. 

A challenge had been issued. And for two who had met through the blade it was never a good idea to begin the relationship with something such as a goading word and a sneer.

* * *

It’s the second time that they visit that they get any answers. The Matron didn’t see any rhyme or reason to their return, and since they refused to leave she had given in with a roll of her eyes and a sigh to bend trees back into tilts. Clover had been more than happy with the arrangement, and as soon as the Princess and her King had walked past the first blades of grass, she’d sprung into surprised actuin, tiny mouth dropping in glee.

“Bog!” Her tiny legs were stubby and awkward still, but she ran fast enough, tripping over herself to get to him, Stubbs flying behind by one well loved arm, flapping around proudly like the most perfect of flags. Her giggles found their way to the surface in full when he scooped her from the floor, throwing her haphazardly through the air. 

“And how is Stubbs today, Lady Clover?” he asked, settling her against his side. She smiled breathlessly, still slipping giggles out through tiny, square teeth. 

“He’s good! He scared ‘way tha monsters last night ‘gain!”

“Did he, really?” Bog leaned over, tilting his head towards the doll in an awkward salute, “My sincerest thanks, Sir Stubbs.” 

She held him up to his face, and Bog had to lean back to keep his eyes from crossing at the strange little creature. “He’s gotta rip in him, see? One’a the boys tugged at his arm an’ Stubbs got a rip an’ I cried. Do you see it?” She palmed the tiny hole, her hand an obstruction from what he could find in torn stitching.

“I do see.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Can you fix it…?” 

“Can you fix it, _please_?” 

“I’ll see what we can do. Marianne? D’ye think ye can help a poor dragon with a broken wing?” The elder Fae glanced over his arm, the child turning the doll towards her next.

“Can you fix him, Marianne?” 

“I can’t. Never could sew to save my life. But my sister can.” In fact Dawn had been begging her for a project. An even if a small thing with dull eyes and a gruesome face wasn’t quite in her line of work, she’d be thrilled at the idea nonetheless.

“Matron says _all_  women should sew!”

Marianne merely snorted, tickling the child, rewarded with a string of giggles. “Yeah, well, I was always better with a sword. And besides, Bog was always more crafty than me.”

“It was one flower crown.”

“Stop denying it, Bog. Next step is collages, and then I’ll have lost you to the call of art.”

But Clover was already too far lost in the idea of parrying and thrusting to pick up on banter, bouncing against a sharp elbow with something worryingly fierce in her eyes. “Cool! Can you teach me an’ Stubbs that too! Sewing is boring an’ I pricked my finger once an’ I hate it.”

She smiled, winking a purple smeared eye and slicing light with a smile. “You bet! Bog can spar you. He’s pretty slow by all accounts.”

“I’ll remember you said that, Tough Girl.”

“Oh I was counting on it, Old Man.”

When they released the child back to the ground, quickly finding a way to jump up and hook claws in her own fingers and drag him off, calling to Marianne to join them because a Knight was much needed. Though the two of them were doing fine on their own, and from what Marianne saw, watching from the corner of her eye, that he’d already been crowned a Princess again, this time the thing atop his head a mishmash of moss and sticks and something that looked suspiciously like poison ivy, but she wouldn’t say anything just yet. 

“Come on, Marianne!” The girl shouted. “We need a Knight!” 

“I’ll be there in a second, hun,” she promised, glancing towards the entrance to the damned place where her target now stood looking less than happy at the returning visitors. “I just have to… take care of some business.”

For they had spent all evening pouring over plants as intricate as a battle. Strategies and questions and ways to corner the injured, all waiting for the moment when the snake slithered from the brush and poison would glint amber in light it could never hold. And Marianne, storming cooly across the ground, weightless in her pride, had never felt more terrified and prepared.

“I suppose you know,” the Princess tilted her chin, and hoped the action would add years to an age she could never heap onto the woman’s thin, pointed shoulders, “why we’re here.” In the background a King and a Dragon had paused in their rescue and had instead begun the rituals of tea time. _This is serious_ , Marianne had to chant to herself. _Stay stoic. Stay calm_. But it was getting harder to do once she saw Bog try his best to balance a tiny acorn mug in his ridiculous hands, chuckling nervously when she asked how many lumps. 

“Of course I do. You’re both stubborn idiots with little time on your hands. And what time you do have,” she sniffed, “has seemingly been used to _mock me_.”

“We’re not _mocking you_. We’re just here for _answers_.”

“So is everyone. And yet they do not wage battles on _orphanages_.”

“Because they return home with a reward, and we remain childless.” The woman scoffed again, but said nothing, her mouth turning down, grooves like trenches, hiding away those who awaited the fires. “You still haven’t told us,” the Princess rumbled, waving at Clover who was jumping up and down to catch her attention, trying to make her watch her newest attempt at a summersault, tea party temporarily abandoned for the calling of gymnastics, the barrages of _watch this_  and _watch me_  seemingly endless since they’d arrived. Marianne gave her a thumbs up before returning back. “why we _can’t_  adopt her.”

“It’s confidential.”

“You’ve obviously forgotten who we are.”

“Or what connections we keep,” Bog growled over the rim of a tea cup far too small for his hand. Intimidation, it would seem, was still something that worked well with him even as the small child offered him another mud pie biscuit and scolded Stubbs for taking all the sugar cubes. 

Marianne turns her own gaze on the Matron, who wriggled under the glare, doing her best to ground her own. But she’d have to break at some point. They’d be back if she didn’t, and the sooner she did the sooner they’d evaporate. 

Even if the Goblin holds a tea cup, he still has claws. And even is she’s merely a Fae with wings of gossamer, there’s a sword at her side. And they’re both sharp in their bodies and their royalty, and there’s simply no hope for someone who’s only edge is a tongue and hair grey as steel. “She’s young,” she finally gave in slowly, making sure every word slipped off a tarred tongue. “And… and she’s quite different.”

“Different is good,” Bog’s own growl was what answered. “Different is what gives the most to this dreadful world.”

“Not to you it wont.” And she looks at the child, now trying to climb a rock, her back towards them. Pink dress closed at all seams, she is without anything that could help her get higher towards a place to stand a survey, and the Matron glares at the dress without holes and twists her lip. “She has a birth defect. The girl won’t grow wings.” The grey haired Fae sniffed, as if the mere thought alone was enough to be detested. “For two such… aerial beings, the question remains of whether you’d be able to handle the task of raising such a grounded creature. Others have not. She’s considered her nothing more than what she’s worth, and what she’s worth will always be what she can’t have. You must understand, I’m merely _protecting_  her. And for two such as yourselves…”

Bog looked quite ready to put down his tiny pink teacup and strangle the woman and Marianne was already devising twin plans in a split mind- whether to take her down herself or to stop Bog and save them the trouble of cleaning up the blood. Stopping him seemed easier and cleaner. Fortunately she wouldn’t have to. The floppy burlap thing shoved in his face did it for her.

“Stubbs helps me fly!” The girl held her dolly up proudly, his arms dangling in the air. “I don’t have wings but he’s really good at flying and it’s all pretend but we go really high up because I’m not afraid’a heights at all because I’m brave!”

As soon as Stubbs was in his line of vision the Goblin’s face softened, blue eyes once again lifting their frigid glaze. “You do seem brave! I am quite sure that your friend here-”

“Stubbs.”

“Oh yes! Or course. Apologies. Stubbs takes awful good care of you.”

She shrugged. “He keeps me from being eated by the monsters under the bed.”

“Does he now?”

“Mmhmm. There used ta be monsters in the closet too, but Stubbs scared them all away.”

“And how did Sir Stubbs do that?”

“He’s very scary when he wants to be,” she told him plainly. “Sometimes he just has to look at them and they go away.”

“Scarier than the Dark Forest?” Bog tested.

Whatever he expected, it certainly wasn’t Clover nodding her head, sitting the doll down onto a rock and standing proudly behind him. “Yup! Because the Dark Forest is just’a big forest! And Goblins aren’t that scary! You’re a Goblin an’ you’re nice an’ you drink tea and live with a nice Fairy and I like her an’ you and so I’d give them all hugs and tea and maybe even a crown so they can all be Princesses too!” She tilted her head, worrying her bottom lip. “Do you think all Goblins wanna be princesses?”

“Ye know what, love?” he choked out around a snort. “Aye. I rather think they would.”

* * *

Bog would wake up that night with Marianne out of bed. And he was tempted to roll over, fall back asleep, and know that perhaps this was just another few nights he’d have to spend without. 

_**Crash!** _

He sprang from bed at the sound, scrambling out of the hold of covers, forgetting his weapon in haste. Thinking there an intruder in his midst his claws were already out and ready when he rounded into the nursery, a snarl waiting in the back of his throat. 

It all depleted in a moment.

“Sorry…” her smile was guilty but real, holding together a few of the broken parts, the unsalvageable bits tossed into a corner. “Thought I’d get a head start on this.”

“On… what?”

“Well, we _had_  a crib in here. But that really wouldn’t have done us any good. So I’m trying to pick up what I can and we’ll get it made into a bed.” Her fingers traced the carvings lovingly. “It’s too pretty to waste, so we might as well just reuse it! Right?”

He stepped in, bending down to pick up a few stray pieces large enough for her liking, handing them over to her smaller fingers. She nodded a thanks, adding them to her collection. “And why are we making a bed, if I might ask?”

“Well you don’t expect her to sleep on the floor, do you?”

He froze, back ridged, blue eyes wide. “Marianne-”

“I thought about it and I couldn’t sleep.” She threw another piece into the garbage pile after scowling at the splintered edges. “When have we ever stopped fighting, right? And why is this any different!”

He watched her another moment, fiddling with the parts of a broken crib, kneeling against the cold floors while the moonlight shrouded her in the most desperate of advances. Finally he stepped forward, knobby limbs creaking as he bent to join her, scooping at what he could find, the two falling into companionable silence.

They go like that for a while, until the sky outside the alcove finally begins to lighten into something cream poured its way into and sweetened the clouds. When they’d gone through the entirety of the space, finding what could be salvaged and throwing away what couldn’t. Until they’d left behind the bare bones of a project soon to be in the making once again. Except this time it would have two creators and the surprise would be a future of hopeful memories.

“Thank you,” he finally told her as the sun finally burned the trees, eyes on what looked like the end of a leg of the recently passed furniture, careful not to let his gaze stray.

She just shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes, it is.”

She shrugged again, turning her back to the Goblin. He didn’t mind, pushing a few splinters against the wall. “Hey, Marianne?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

If she smiled he couldn’t see it, but something in her voice told him that she had. “Let’s just build a bed, you idiot.”

The fighting doesn’t take as long as they expect it to. A few weeks truly. But it’s endless and exhausting, and the two of them found themselves in foul moods more than they should have liked. 

At first there had been the refusals. 

Then the excuses.

Perhaps the worst, really, had been the blame. For the woman had referenced children’s story after fable, reading aloud from passages as Goblins ate up Fairy young and used their bones as toothpicks. 

There were arguments. Shouting. Meeting after meeting.

But eventually there was nothing left but for them to win, and the Matron had given up with a sound so near feral they’d been convinced she truly was the ogre of the story they were living. But a date was set, a paper was signed and a room was arranged. And it all happened too quickly and not fast enough.

“I don’t think I’m ready for this,” she told him, pushing the newly made bed farther across the room, trying to find the best place the light would catch. It had been fine every turn, but she’d determined to find perfection, and nothing in this world is going to give it to her. The scratches along the floor scream up towards a ceiling in a cry for help. “Goddammit, Bog, I don’t-”

“Neither am I.”

“Good. If you were I might have had to kill you.”

“Ah. Well, I didn’t much think you were supposed ta be ready for this anyway, love.”

“Right. Well then, I guess I’m fine.”

He nodded through a wry smile. “You’re not regretting-”

“Never.”

And when they put together the rest of the furniture, a crib no longer standing open for an opportunity, he wonders if he had destroyed enough to still see the sorrow that resided there. And the god awful idea that something was still in the makings. 

He turns his own eyes on Marianne, and she has to hold back a sob at the look he gives her. It’s more hope then she’s seen in weeks. More happiness than she can describe. _Yes, this is what I want. This is what we need. I want to add a title onto what I already have and I wish to be something to someone._

And then grief is a trail and no longer a weight, and it’s a hard one to follow, but they’re standing in front of that same thatched hut, the faces of scared children peeking outside of pristine windows, a little girl and her doll standing near to them.

“Are you going to be my daddy?” The King asks the Princess, the dragon held tight in her grasp. 

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Bog answered back, smile sure and shy and absolutely terrified. “That is… it is your decision, Darling.”

“Oh…” She looked down at stone eyes, petting the top of a burlap head. “And you’re my mommy?” She asks Marianne, and the Fairy with the sword nodded. 

“Yeah. I am, kiddo.”

Clover nodded, and though she wore no crown atop her head, the look she passed them both could have sprouted her wings and made a Kingdom into something far superior. “Stubbs would like that,” she told them both honestly.

They thanked Stubbs the Doll profusely for his input later on.

But at the end of the day, when they’re standing together, hands linked merely to keep their trembles condensed to a point, to hold one another together, to make sure this is what we want more than anything in the world the tragedies can make themselves into a future that is still mourned in yesterdays and remembered in tomorrows. When the tiny Fairy child is escorted by kind hand toward the royal couple, huge eyes fixated on the two before her, their own smiles nervous and wobbling and fingers twitches, terrified-

“Here you are, dear. Now, be good, won’t you? And don’t give them any trouble. And if they do, you tell me. I’m sure everyone would understand if a Goblin had done something.”

“Bog wouldn’t do anything! Bog is nice and he plays tea an’ Princesses!” 

The woman bent low to fix her hair, ignoring the defense. Perfection being a standard one of the many reasons it was so difficult for them, trying time and time again to prove that he wasn’t dangerous, never to someone like that. 

The deciding moment had been when Marianne pulled her aside in private and explained with murder in her eyes that claws and fangs and scales were meant to be beautiful if the right person looked and perhaps she should fear what she didn’t expect in the end. Protection would be given. And so would love, for he had a heart too big for his chest and could fill oceans.

Because they’d be back. Again and again. For she had fought for a sister once and he’d fought through a world falling around them, and there had been trappings and confusion and bias and pointed fingers sparring that was never their own. And if she thought that one Matron with a wicked sneer could be the end of them, then she was _sorely_ mistaken.

And after that, horror flitting through her eyes, there had been paperwork to sign.

A mother had clasped her hands in joy when a son explained that they were taking Grumby from his place in the closet, for he’d be joined with a new friend and a person who’d need protection. 

“I’m gettin’ a grandbaby!” Griselda had grabbed him round the middle, pulling him down, eyes shimmering with mirth. “Oh _Boggy_! You’re gonna be a _father_!”

“I am,” he’d replied, curt and honest. Even if the idea alone was enough to jar him from reality. Because it was true. He, the Bog King, was going to be- “Just a warning, mother. She’s… I mean you _know_  we fought for her. But she _is_  a Fairy. And if you have any _problems_  we do under-”

“ _Problems_! Peh! Son, ye married a Fairy, ya kidnapped a Fairy and now ya think I care if there’s one runnin’ you up the wall? Please. It could be the third cousin of a frog an’ I wouldn’t give a rats ass.” He flushed, and she chortled. “It’s a _child_ , Boggy,” she told him, sobered. “You love them. You care for them. You watch them grow. You watch them leave. There isn’t much else too it. You just hope time doesn’t pass too fast.”

“It won’t.”

“Yeah. It will.” She looked up at him, tall and foreboding and gentle in his villainy. “Trust me, son. It will.”

“You take good care of her,” The Matron told them both, pushing the girl towards them where she stood, holding her doll close and smiling a ridiculous grin to match theirs. “She’s fragile. And a Fairy. She’s meant to be in the light, and I expect you to provide.”

“There’s enough light there,” he promised. And Marianne nodded.

“Bright sun, and an even brighter moon. She’ll be fine.”

And when the Matron does back away, finally beaten into a surrender she never had a choice but to take, the little girl is running forward, embracing the two of them in turn. Delicate arms winding around a neck, the top of her head, soft and careful, bumping against thorns as claws wind around a thin back and scales cut against willowy limbs and a hand reaches out to brush long fingers and wings velvet and deep in their pitch. But she merely huddles towards it all, for she has always been meant for the violets and the brambles they grow against. 

“I guess that’s it then,” Marianne chokes out, an attempt at casual broken by years to come. “Easy as that!”

“Easy as that…” Bog nods, blue eyes shining. “Well then, Miss Clover-”

“And Stubbs _,_ ” she reminds him, as she will now and before every party and get together and royal meeting and bedtime.

“Of course. And Stubbs too. I suppose we should go then.”

“We’d like that,” Clover nodded.

“So would we.” Marianne replied, grabbing his arm to hold on because they’re both finally letting go of tethers and she’s afraid she might sink away from this exact moment. But she doesn’t, and he holds onto her just as fast, because he’s scared too. But a bed is already made and a doll has been resurfaced and there’s a place that must be named home all over again, for it had forgotten how to call itself that after too many nights without. 

And so the Princess and the Knight and the Fairy and the Dragon embraced their differences and secured attempts of a past and walked over a border to a place called home.

**Author's Note:**

> For sophaoat (and also dainesanddaffodils who co-requested it at one point), who requested this a long time ago, and was going to receive a 2000 word quick drabble but is instead receiving this 40 some odd page monster.
> 
> Darling, I tried. Oh god did I try.
> 
> For those who don’t know, I was challenged to write a drabble that included the topics of “will you marry me?”, “I’m pregnant” and one other surprising factor that I totally forgot but let’s just pretend it was “SURPRISE!” and my brain took that and was like, yes… I can angst that… oh hell to the yes I can…


End file.
